1 The availability of Business Activity Statement (BAS) data collected by the Australian Taxation Office (ATO) has provided the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) with opportunities to improve the efficiency of collection designs and estimation for its business surveys, while at the same time reducing the reporting burden placed on businesses. Under taxation law, data may be passed by the Commissioner for Taxation to the ABS for specified statistical purposes. Accordingly, turnover and wages information sourced from ATO Business Activity Statement data was used to improve the accuracy of the 2011-12 industry estimates which were produced using data items collected directly by the ABS from businesses.

ESTIMATION METHODOLOGY

2 The 2011-12 Private Sector Construction Industry Survey estimates have been produced using generalised regression estimation. This estimation method enables maximum use of observed linear relationships between data directly collected from businesses in the survey and auxiliary information. When the auxiliary information is strongly correlated with data items collected in a survey, the generalised regression estimation methodology will improve the accuracy of the estimates. The auxiliary variables used in this survey were turnover and wages sourced from BAS data.

PRODUCING ESTIMATES

3 The following diagram illustrates the ways in which Construction businesses contribute to the estimates in this publication.

4 For the purpose of compiling the estimates in this publication, data for businesses as recorded on the ABS Business Register (ABSBR) contribute via one of two categories (or 'streams') in accordance with significance and collection related characteristics.

Completely enumerated (CE) stream:

5 The completely enumerated stream consists of directly collected survey data for those units recorded on the ABSBR as having employment greater than 300, plus additional economically significant units in the Profiled Population and units significant to small state estimates.

Generalised regression estimation stream:

6 The generalised regression estimation stream comprises directly collected data for those sampled units which are not in the CE stream and have turnover, in aggregate, above the bottom 2.5 percentile of BAS sales for that industry, or are identified as employing businesses (based on ATO information).

Business Activity Statement (BAS) stream:

7 The reader should exercise caution interpreting the estimates relating to the number of Construction businesses, as this survey excludes businesses that contributed in aggregate less than 2.5% of Business Activity Statement (BAS) turnover and had zero employment.

8 This stream, comprising of 103,506 businesses is not in the scope of the Private Sector Construction Industry survey. Of the 103,506 businesses not eligible for selection, Construction services accounted for 69,236 businesses, Building construction 29,760 and Heavy and civil engineering 4,510.

9 Estimates for each of the selected industries were produced by aggregating the contributing data streams.

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